Foul weather, not furlough, primary cause of O'Hare delays

While the airline industry said Friday that the air traffic controller furloughs caused flight delays to triple this week, the impact on Chicago travelers was less severe overall, officials said.

O'Hare International Airport experienced delays that in some cases exceeded two hours, but the primary cause was weather, not furloughs, officials said. High winds over several days on the East Coast and rain across the Midwest midweek prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to implement air traffic restrictions that slowed the flow of flights nationwide, officials said.

Controllers in the Chicago area — at O'Hare and Midway airports as well as at FAA radar facilities in Elgin and Aurora — for the most part did not take their mandatory furlough days early in the week when the sequestration cuts took effect, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

O'Hare, which is the only U.S. airport that serves as a hub for two major airlines, American and United, is one of the most delay-prone airports in the nation under normal circumstances. Poor weather amplifies the effect of the heavy traffic at O'Hare, where new runways are being built to increase capacity.

Thirty-six percent of flights at O'Hare were delayed Wednesday, the highest delay percentage of all major airports, FlightStats.com reported, adding that it did not attribute the causes of the delays. Midway, at 30 percent, ranked No. 6 for the highest delay percentage Wednesday, FlightStats.com said.

On Wednesday, because of controller furloughs at the FAA's Chicago Center in Aurora, which handles traffic over parts of the Midwest, departures from O'Hare heading east were restricted during part of the day, said Dan Carrico, president of the controllers union at O'Hare tower. The result was that takeoffs from O'Hare that are normally spaced 3 miles apart were instead spread out 10 miles between departures, Carrico said.

In addition, only two arrival runways were used instead of three at O'Hare during part of Wednesday and Thursday because of controller staffing shortages at the FAA's radar facility in Elgin, which handles planes approaching and departing Chicago-area airports, Carrico said. The reduction allowed 72 landings per hour at O'Hare instead of 114 hourly under normal operations, he said.

The furloughs and staffing shortages added stress to an already high-tension job, the controllers chief said.

"Overall the controllers at O'Hare kept a positive attitude,'' Carrico said Friday.

Controllers and airline pilots said they did not let safety become compromised.